Murder Melody
by Sket
Summary: I thought I'd throw a horror story into the MM fanficdom, forgive the name. A sleepover between Lina, Hanon, and Lucia at the Pearl Piari goes horribly wrong. Rated T for blood/death/etc. Please review, both positive and negative comments welcome.
1. A Rude Awakening

Author's Note: I do not, nor ever have, nor ever will, own Mermaid Melody. Mermaid Melody seems to be lacking in the horror department, so I thought I'd try my hand at it. I've never really written this kind of story before, so let's hope it goes well. Please forgive the cheesy name, I couldn't think of anything.

This story will primarily revolve around Hanon, though there will be parts following other characters as well.

* * *

"Mmm!" Hanon couldn't help but squeal out, a reaction not much different from the two other girls in the room. The blue haired girl sat on Lucia's bed, wielding a melon pudding and a spoon. Lucia was on the other side of the bed, and Lina was sitting in a backwards-turned chair, both also with pudding.

Lina had finally went through with her promise to buy some melon pudding. Now they were all enjoying the fruits of her trip to the convenience store, as well as starting off a sleep over. The night was going well so far, and Hanon was sure they'd have fun. She just hoped they wouldn't be too dead in the morning, it was a school night after all. Though as the night continued even that worry faded away in the fun and the pudding.

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"IIIAAAAAA!!" Hanon jolted awake, eyes shooting wide open. She quickly sat up, trying to get a grip on what was going on. The young teen tried to shake away the remnants of her dream, she was sure that scream had been real. The mermaid sat in her sleeping bag, in a dark room. From the star light streaming through the window she confirmed that she was indeed still in Lucia's room, right where she'd fallen asleep. That just left the two other people who'd fallen asleep in the room. The groggy girl got up and looked around. Empty. Lina's sleeping bag was still there, and Lucia's bed looked slept in, but there was no Lina in her bag and no Lucia in her bed. Hanon quickly left the room, instinctively shutting the door behind her.

She stood in the blackness of the hall, fidgeting her toes on the carpet as she tried to gauge where the scream had come from. It was hard to tell, as she hadn't exactly been alert when it had come. So much so she wasn't even sure who it was that had screamed. She was pretty sure, though, that it had come from below her. The kitchen then, seemed a likely location. Where else would someone go in the middle of the night? There was no need to go downstairs to use the bathroom.

And so she began taking blind steps towards the staircase, walking with certainty due to her knowledge of the building. She sighed to herself, envisioning things like Lucia going down for a midnight snack, then dropping the butter without noticing and slipping on it as she left. She almost took a spill herself, forgetting to look out for the stairs. After stumbling over the first few she managed to pinwheel her arms backwards and manage to not fall. She stopped and sighed again, this time of relief.

And just then, in the silence, she heard the step. The third step from the bottom on the first floor always creaked--a fact all midnight snackers trying to sneak by Nikora knew. Just as she'd stopped, someone stepped on it. Her heartbeat raced, trying to figure out if they were going up or down-which was or course impossible. She managed to calm herself, reassuring her heart that it didn't matter, the worst that could happen was a small scolding from Nikora for being out and about so late.

By the time her heartbeat returned to normal, she realized the person must have been moving away, as they would have reached her by now. Just then something wet wrapped around her arm. She shrieked terror and jerked, flailing her legs out. The wet thing vanished, and as she landed behind her on her butt she heard something tumbling down the steps.

"Oi, Hanon, what do you think you're doing!?" A familiar-and not very happy-voice from below her called out.

"Lina!?" Was all Hanon could manage, her current heart rate running circles around the one from before. She tried to slow her breathing as she listened to Lina pick herself up and continue up the stairs--for the second time. "S-sorry…you just scared the hell out of me." She muttered, blushing in the blackness.

"Ah, I would've reacted the same way. I wish you hadn't kicked me quite so hard though." Lina muttered, and Hanon envisioned her rubbing her stomach. She decided to keep the fact that it had been an accident to herself for the moment. Then she took notice of the sticky feeling on her pajama sleeve left behind from Lina's hand.

"Ne, what was that on your hand? And was that you who screamed?" Hanon hadn't really meant to ask two questions at the same time, but her unasked for alarm clock came out as well.

"Scream? Wha-no. I don't know what you're talking about. And this is just tomato juice. I made a sandwich and didn't realize how juicy the tomatoes were-it got everywhere. Well, it wasn't exactly easy to eat in the dark anyway." Lina explained.

"Dark? Why didn't you turn the light on?" Hanon question, cocking her head to the side despite no one being able to see it.

"I couldn't?" Lina answered, making Hanon feel like she was missing something. After the aquamarine princess failed to give a response, Lina spoke up again. "The power's out."

"Oh." Hanon replied mechanically. And after a pause: "So, um, where's Lucia?"

"In bed, isn't she?"

"No, the room was empty when I woke up. That's why I'm out here, I was coming down to see where you guys were--and who screamed."

"I'm telling you, no one screamed. That's what woke you up right? It was probably a part of your dream."

"It was not!" Hanon replied angrily, for some reason feeling like she needed the scream to be real. "I was having a good dream, there shouldn't have been a scream." She stated firmly, crossing her arms and nodding to herself.

"Dreams don't make sense sometimes." Lina replied, a shrug in her voice. Hanon could tell this argument wouldn't go anywhere and decided to drop it and get back to what she was doing.

"Well, anyway, I'm going downstairs to look for Lucia." The blue haired girl informed the green pearl voice, leaving out the reason for the search. She began clumsily down the stairs, and heard Lina follow after her.

After she reached the bottom-managing not to fall the whole way-she began feeling her way along the walls, making her way towards the kitchen. Lina-who was still following behind-had said she'd just had a sandwich, but, if she hadn't heard the scream, then she may have been eating it outside or something. And anyway, she preferred to stick to her first choice anyway. Her second-guesses on tests always seemed to be wrong, so she tended to stick with what her gut said first.

Just as she stepped into the kitchen, her foot collided with a cold, wet, puddle. She couldn't stop her momentum in time and felt her leg fly out in front of her. Without the sense of sight the fall seemed to go in slow motion, she felt her legs raise above her body and her arms reach out to grab something. She found nothing, and as a result next felt her upper back slam painfully into the linoleum.

Her pajamas eagerly soaked up the fluid covering the tiling as each part landed, and as her head clunked against the floor with a crack her hair got drenched too-mostly from the splash of her collision with the floor. She sat up with a moan; head throbbing and feeling weighted down from all the soaked up wet whatever-it-was.

"What happened?" Lina asked in her worried tone, taking the last three steps quickly and stopping at the doorway.

"Nothing, I just slipped. Oh--watch out, the floor's wet." The brown eyed girl answered, thinking to herself that that was an understatement. Whatever she'd slipped in, there must have been a lot to make all of her dripping wet. She got to her feet, with some difficulty, after crawling clumsily to the left and finding a counter to pull herself up with. Along the way she made a little squeak as her hand went into something squishy. "Ugh, Lina what did you do? Throw the whole stock in the blender and leave the lid off?" She complained, thinking of the tomatoes the taller girl had afore mentioned.

"I'm goanna go look for the emergency kit behind the counter." Lina announced, ignoring Hanon's question, and headed away from the kitchen.

"Kay'. I think there's a flashlight under the sink." Hanon replied, though judging by the fading footsteps it was more to herself than to Lina. After figuring out where she was she made her way around the room and eventually found the sink. Found meaning accidentally plunging her arm into a sinkful of dishes and water, which also resulted in her third shriek of surprise for the night.

She bent down and felt around for the handles, then pulled them open. She cussed under her breath as she smacked herself in the head with one of the cabinet doors. This was not her night. She felt around in the cabinet space-grimacing at the nasty feeling her hands were receiving from all the dust and debris sticking to her wet fingers. Finally, amidst the bottles and buckets, she felt something long and made of plastic, and pulled it out. She fidgeted around with it, but failed to get any results.

Grunting in frustration, she turned around and sat against the cabinet frame, trying to get the flashlight on. Finally she realized there was no button and she needed to turn the end, and on came the light; along with her fourth scream for the night. She dropped the flashlight and it rolled to the side, its light still trained on the corpse not three feet away.

* * *

Ending Note: So that's the first chapter, tell me what you think! I'm trying to make this have an actual story to it and not just be random murders, that doesn't really show yet considering the only thing I've done so far is randomly kill off someone. But it will be explained later! I think...


	2. A Distant Moan

"Found one!" Lina said to herself as she pulled the flashlight from the drawer she'd been fishing through behind the front desk. After fumbling for a bit she clicked it on and was just about to continue her search for the emergency kit when Hanon's bloodcurdling scream filled the room. Lina quickly moved around the desk and made a dash for the kitchen. As she reached her destination she stopped dead in the doorway, her arms going limp and dropping the flashlight.

Her mind automatically switched gears, instinctively going into survival mode. The green haired beauty quickly bent and caught the flashlight. As she did this, her emotions took the back seat and logic took the steering wheel. She straightened and surveyed the room. Near the entrance was the body, laying unnaturally and entirely red. The cause of death was obvious; nearly half of the victim's head was caved in, skull and all, leaving a sickening pull of brain matter, bone fragment, and tissue visible within. Around the floor, on the cabinets, everywhere was blood. A trail could be seen of someone crawling to the left, and the handprint on the counter suggested they used it to stand.

"Nikora…" Lina whipped her head, and flashlight, in the other direction, lighting upon Hanon, sitting against the counter and dyed red.

---

Hanon's mind had done just the opposite of her friend's, kicking into slow motion. The role of the flashlight sounded like a slowly moving boulder, and the body's condition, constantly illuminated by the flashlight's cruel rotation, came in bits and pieces. There was a body. It was covered in blood. Not just the body, its all over the floor and cabinets. That was what she slipped in. There was a large cavity in the body's head. That must have been where her hand—ugh. There was a blender, its base dyed red, near Hanon's feet. It was probably the culprit. The body…has purple hair. Its…

"Nikora…" Hosho muttered, eyes widening even further. A sudden light hit her, nearly blinding her, but she took no notice. "N-Nikora!?" She finally registered what was going on, her eyes filling with tears. "Nikora!!" She scrambled forward and grabbed uselessly onto the older woman's pants leg. "Nikora, wake up!" She cried futilely, tears openly streaming down her face. She grabbed her more forcefully now, beginning to sob. "Wake up!!" She screamed between sobs, shaking the corpse. "Wake up, damn it!!"

Two hands grabbed her, one on her arm just below the shoulder and one on the opposite side under the armpit, and yanked her backwards and up. She came to her feet, though the hands were the ones supporting her weight, her limp body unable to presently support itself. Hanon was becoming unaware of anything and everything around her, but even without seeing Nikora's corpse before her the image was burned into her mind. Suddenly she was spun around to face the other direction, and shaken violently.

"Hanon! Hanon!! Get a hold of yourself!" A harsh slap to the side of her face brought Hanon back to reality. Her vision returned and her hitching sobs dwindled to a steady flow of silent tears. She looked up to see Lina staring back at her. The taller girl gave a curt nod, apparently satisfied with Hosho's condition, dropped her to her feet, grabbed her hand, and started walking quickly away from the kitchen.

"L-lina!? What're you doing?" Hanon stumbled along behind her.

"Leaving. What does it look like?" The mature teenager answered.

"B-but, what about Nikora?" The aquamarine replied. Lina stopped, turned around to face Hanon, and put her hands on her shoulders

"She's dead. Who cares!?" Hosho just stared unbelievingly into the burning green ones. Lina blinked and straightened, letting her arms slide off Hanon's shoulders. "T-that's not what I meant, Hanon. Its just, there's nothing we can do for her now, and the killer could still be around."

Hanon blinked stupidly. That hadn't occurred to her. Killed. Nikora was dead, that had come across easily enough. But she hadn't thought about how she had died. Nikora had been murdered. More over, that meant someone had to have murdered her. That meant everyone in the hotel was in danger.

"Now let's go, we have to get out of here and alert the police." Lina continued calmly, turning to continue walking. She was stopped by Hanon grabbing the back of her shirt. She turned back around to face the shorter of the two as Hanon began speaking.

"Hold on! We can't just leave! This is a hotel, remember? We have guests! And Lucia and the others are still unaccounted for! Are we supposed to just abandon them?" Hanon demanded.

"Going for help isn't abandoning them." Lina said, but the determination in Hanon's eyes didn't fade. "Well…what do you want us to do then?" Hanon opened her mouth to reply, but she was interrupted by a distant moan.

---

Nanami slowly faded into consciousness. Her eyes slowly slid open and her blurry vision began to focus in on the ceiling. Her head reeled, to lightheaded to think clearly. Her numb hands clumsily found their way to her side, where they investigated the bloody cloth. Finally they discovered the hole in the cloth, and her eyes shut tightly in a grimace of pain as she poked through to inspect her skin. Her foggy mind decided that whatever had ripped through her shirt had ripped through her skin as well.

As her hands fumbled slowly around her soaking shirt, unsure of what to do, her eyes began to slip closed again. Distantly she heard a door swing open and someone shouting her name. In a paradox, the approaching footsteps grew fainter and fainter.

* * *

Author's note: Well here's chapter two, finally! When I wrote the first chapter I had some semblance of a storyline in mind, but this chapter doesn't even have the same dead person, so as of right now I don't know where this is going. Thank you sheshe-mimi fan, CrossAcademyNightClassStudent, lolineechan for your reviews, and Archerygurl's, your's gave me the final push to actually write another chapter.

And to the vampire, I do usually spell it Rina, but from what I've read most people spell it Lina. And as for the mermaid, I'm not sure if you're referring to the blood or the sink, or both. As for the blood; I believe it has to be water for them to transform, and though there's a lot of water in blood, I don't consider it water. As for the sink, I also believe it needs to be a decent amount of water (a water balloon, a spray gun, a dive into water, etc). She only got her hand wet in the sink, which I don't consider enough. If I'm wrong on either of these notes, please just ignore it for the sake of the story :P


	3. A Faltering Trust

Disclaimer: I don't own Mermaid Melody or its characters, hence the 'fan' in fanfiction.

Author's Note: So here's the next chapter! I hope you enjoy it, and overlook how long its been since I put up the last chapter. Please R&R!

"This is insane…" Hanon moaned, staring pointlessly down at her hands. Her life had turned into a second-rate 90s slasher. At this thought stupid tag lines began running through her head of slumber parties gone wrong and insane asylum escapees. Tag lines became fantasies and she began working herself into a panic over what might be behind the curtains or on the other side of the door. She shut her eyes and forced the thoughts away, mentally giving her imagination a whack on the back of the head.

The blue haired girl opened her eyes and stared down at the limp body beneath her. Nanami Lucia was pale, and her breathing shallow, but so far as Hosho could tell she was no worse than before. But then again, she had no idea how long she'd been crouching here in this awkward position, staring down at her red-coated hands as they held a large piece of cloth-torn from the curtain-against Lucia's side. She felt so helpless, both for Lucia and herself.

"Where the hell are you…" She whispered, almost inaudibly. Not that saying it louder would have done any good, for the person she wanted an answer from wasn't even in the room. Lina was off somewhere, looking for a first aid kit. She seemed almost…business like, behaving rationally and practically. Hanon was glad for it though, for she was certainly in nothing resembling a survival mode. She was in more of an oh-my-god-my-friends-are-dying mode. You don't get much done by yourself in that kind of mode.

When she had busted into the room-there was error one, she thought suddenly, running in here blindly-and seen Lucia's body, she'd almost wound up on the floor herself. Instead her legs kept carrying her forward robotically, her body going numb and far away. She had screamed out the light-haired girl's name, whether in her mind or out loud she didn't know. The blunette had skidded to her knees, tears forming in her eyes all over again, before the body. She let out something between a gasp and a sob when she'd seen Lucia was still breathing.

During this emotional display, Lina had entered the room behind her with her eyes lingering on Lucia only long enough to gauge that she was alive, then preceding to scan the room for anyone else. Then she had rushed towards and past Lucia and Hanon, to the window. The long haired teen had gripped the curtain and with a yank tore off a large portion of the bottom. Then she'd tossed it at Hanon, the fabric fluttering to the ground beside her. Put pressure on the wound; she'd said. I'll look for a first aid kit; she'd said. I'll be right back; she'd said. Then she had left. Just like that.

Had Lina not been present, Lucia probably would have bled to death before the aquamarine pearl's fumbling mind had thought to do some form of first aid and find some means to do it with. But now she wasn't here, it was just Hanon and Lucia. The brown eyed girl suddenly felt a crushing loneliness, and longed for Lina's presence. Her mental pleas for her mature friend to suddenly bust through the door went unanswered. An overwhelming urge to start sobbing uncontrollably surged her, but she willed it off. She'd done that enough for one night, she thought resolutely; if she kept on as she had she'd end up in hysterics. Again. Just as she was telling herself to take a page out of Lina's book, Lina arrived.

"Hanon." The tallest of the three said, placing a hand on the blunette's shoulder. This resulted in a high-pitched scream, thankfully shorter and less bone chilling than her previous one; and quieter. Hanon twisted around to see her friend beside her, first-aid kit in hand. "What's wrong with you!?" She asked in the same semi-speaking semi-ordering tone she'd been using all night. Hanon bit back a harsh 'what do you think' and silently moved out of the way.

After having crawled to the side, Hanon pulled her knees up to her chest and uselessly watched as Lina gave Lucia medical attention. Lina Touin lifted her friend's shirt and examined the wound. True to Hanon's horror movie thoughts, the wound looked like it had been caused by a kitchen knife. Lina voiced this, and strangely the blunette's first thought was: What's next, a strainer? Lina opened the first aid kit and cleaned Lucia's side of blood, then disinfected the wound and applied a square adhesive bandage. After this she leaned back and closed the kit, and then a silence overtook the room.

"She's alright?" Hanon asked at length, "I mean, she's not goanna die of internal bleeding or anything?" For some reason she felt so numb, so tired. Heavy.

"She'll be alright for now." Lina replied, "But she needs medical attention. We should get her to a hospital."

"And what about the guests?" Hanon asked, bringing up the issue yet again. Lina Touin didn't answer immediately and in the pause the blunette wondered-shouldn't Lina be caring about the others in the hotel? Or was she wrong to put the general public before Lucia? She'd phrased it that way without thinking, and was now overcome with guilt. Good god, she cared more about people she didn't know than her own best friend. What kind of person was she? "L-Lucia will be okay for a while right? We can do something-pull a fire alarm?"

"You do that Hanon," Touin answered, "and they'll know right where you are."

"They?" Hanon questioned. "There's more than one?" Lina simply continued to gaze at Lucia. "Lina, say something!" The green haired girl stood suddenly.

"Stay here. I'm going to go look around." The tall girl turned, and quickly left the room, the door opening and shutting as silently as her previous entrance. Hanon watched her go silently, and immediately felt unprotected. But at the same time, strangely, less tense; despite now being alone and unprotected. It was then that, her mind for once shutting up, Hanon's eyes slowly traveled from her shaking hands to her lower arm; where her pajama sleeve was encrusted with a handprint-a red handprint. Had anyone been in the room, they might have heard a strange clicking noise.

Who had been downstairs, unharmed and unshaken, when Hanon had woken up? Who had known where to find a flashlight? Who hadn't seemed the least bit disturbed by Nikora Nanami lying there on the kitchen floor? Or even more so, by Lucia's? Who had, on multiple occasions now, been alone in this place, and always appeared unscathed. And who, not for the first time, showed no fear in doing so?

Hosho stopped her thoughts, shaking her head from side to side in denial. Lina's brave, is all. There's nothing wrong with that. And it's a blessing she's keeping herself together, not a curse. Hanon certainly wouldn't be getting anywhere without her. Besides, a mermaid princess being a murderer? Even if she were capable of it, Lina hates Gaito! She'd never willingly kill a fellow princess. She was only downstairs to make a sandwich for God's sake!

"But..." She muttered, "how can you make a sandwich in the dark?" That simple question shattered it, the fragile wall she'd been trying to build. Lina going, in the middle of the night, in a black out, to make a sandwich, and not noticing a dead body on the ground? Try as she might, Hanon could not find a way to justify Lina's actions.

"It could be a coincidence!" She shouted to no one, then realized she had shouted and instantly felt paranoid. The young mermaid decided she needed to do something, otherwise she would just sit here all night battling with herself. And by the time she'd reach a decision, either Lina would've killed her or Line would've been killed by the real killer. She figured she should make a decision based on her own personal safety, that could be beneficial to either reality.

"There, see, Lina's not the only one that can be logical." She said quietly, looking at Lucia. Hanon stood and reached for the tattered curtains. After a bit of a struggle, ripping curtains wasn't as easy as Lina had made it look, Hosho managed to tear off a long, thin strip of cloth. She tied it around her friend's waist, holding the first piece against her wound.

Hanon gingerly rose to her feet, lifting Lucia along with her. She stood, staring at the door, trying to plan out what to do next.


End file.
